I started thinking about why I wasn't posting, though, and I realized the problem (at least on my end): there is nothing *BIG* to post about.

Seriously.

I mean, as Green Lantern Fans (or Fanterns), we don't have a movie coming up (unless you count that never-gonna-happen Justice League film), our cartoon has been cancelled, and the current status of the comic stories are arguably somwhere between "eh" and "meh."

And, without the *BIG* things to post about, what do we do?

Well, if you are anything like me (and, by all that is holy and just, let's hope it is only a bit) you have probably thought of something along the way that you thought was neat or cool or keen or swell, but maybe wasn't worth giving its own thread. I know I have hit that "New Post" button several times and after about a sentence worth of typing, I just closed it, knowing it wasn't worth posting. A single thought does not a thread make.

But, what if there was a generic little open thread where the random thought, image, opinion, whatever could live happily? A place where one throw out that one-off idea without worrying about starting a whole new thread "just for that."

This is that place.

Maybe, along the way, something might catch fire, and be able to spring off into its own thread. Or, it'll sit in here and rot on the vine. Either way, maybe it will help spur us all forward in posting activity.

Housekeeping stuff - Try to keep to a single subject per post. Having five random topics in a single post decreases the attention given to each one. It'd be better to post five separate times and let people reply or ignore what they wish.

Back when the movie figures came out, I talked about doing something like this, and someone beat me to it:

I still plan to do this as well, since I have the figures already (just haven't gotten around to doing it). I am glad to see that the 3 3/4 scale figures are completely NOT in 3 3/4 scale (as I thought) and so the heads fit perfectly.

I may change up the paints a bit. Eliminate that gold above the emblems, maybe paint the center of the front of the robes white so it will reflect more the comic style robes.

I didn't realize they actually came out with all the guardians, I figured they stopped after the first3. It does remind me of something I had been considering, which was to try and obtain the setof smaller figures for when James is old enough to play with them. Even though the movie wasn't amazing, it still mightbe cool to have a bunch of Green Lanterns to play with. I guess I would just get the Guardian 2 packs first and then get the remaining figures, but it's only worth it if I could find them really cheap.

I didn't realize they actually came out with all the guardians, I figured they stopped after the first3. It does remind me of something I had been considering, which was to try and obtain the setof smaller figures for when James is old enough to play with them. Even though the movie wasn't amazing, it still mightbe cool to have a bunch of Green Lanterns to play with. I guess I would just get the Guardian 2 packs first and then get the remaining figures, but it's only worth it if I could find them really cheap.

Sadly, finding the second set of three is a little difficult. They had a very limited release (I've never seen them in stores myself, and suspect that only Canada got them).

I ended up picking up a full set (all six figures) off of eBay in order to get the three I didn't have. Ended up paying over $6 per two-pack when you count shipping. Comparing that with what I paid for the first set of three previously (on drastic clearance), it is terrible, but given what those last three figures are going for separately, it isn't that bad.

Of course, knowing I plan to decapitate them and attach the heads to the 6" scale Krona bodies (which I got for less than $5 apiece) does make me feel a little bad. Not enough to stop me, but still.

EarthGBilly wrote:Of course, knowing I plan to decapitate them and attach the heads to the 6" scale Krona bodies (which I got for less than $5 apiece) does make me feel a little bad. Not enough to stop me, but still.

I finally decided what I'm gonna do about that new wave of Power Battery prop replicas. At first I only cared about Green, right? That's kind of the holy grail of my Green Lantern wants. But then I thought...Orange would be nice, and the theme of "wanting" would fit nice...but then I thought about how Blue would be good for me, since I love the Blue Lanterns so much...it didn't take too long for me to more or less settle on getting the whole damn set. Just imagine having allllllllllllll those Batteries in one fantastic display.

But that price tag kept kind of nagging at me. $200 normally, $135 through DCBS, still a lot of money, especially considering they're the same thing with a different paint job. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut the after market of Power Batteries tends to be the $300-infinity price range, so the prospect of "this is a once in a lifetime opportunity" weighed heavily on my soul.

While all this was going on, they solicited the Yellow one. So I ordered it. Because.

Since then, I've come to the epic conclusion that no, I don't need the entire kickass set adorning my room like the gates of nerd Valhalla. I am, however, going back for the ones that do mean something to me. Green, duh. Yellow, already locked in. Orange, hell yes. And Blue to cap it all off.

So there ya go. Still a lot of money, but that's four out of nine, so I can justify it to myself pretty well.

It's like I told you. You either get them all and have an insane display, or you just get the ones important to you. If you don't care about yellow, no point owning it. Truth be told, I don't care about my yellow battery, It's just still hard to part with. I have my greens already, but I do want blue and red, because emotionally, they mean something to me.

No, I managed to break the Batman: Black & White habit. They made it easier than I thought it would be.

First, the prices continued to increase. As a comic geek, I'm used to that sorta shafting, so if that had been it, I'd have stuck with it.

Second, they started allowing artists that had already had an example of "their" Batman to produce additional Batman statue designs. It kinda goes against the entire reason of the line, but I was already skipping non-Batman statues, so I could skip multiple examples from the same artist.

Finally, though, the last straw was the "reissue" of statues in the line. As a recovering Comic Archivist (collector), I have been able to curb a lot of my "old" ways - completism, buying multiple copies, hermetically sealing for the purpose of a retirement fund that will never really happen - but, when you produce something that directly devalues my collection, that still ticks me off. Even though they change the color of the base of the statue for the reissues, I have seen the most valuable statue in the line sell for half of what it was previously going for after the release of the reissue.

Not very nice.

It is for the best, though. In the last few months, they seem to have stepped up the production of these things, soliciting two a month. I don't have an extra $100+ a month to waste on these things.

gland wrote:Do you still display your collection? Or have you squirreled away the bulk of them, hiding your secret shame, except for one or two favorites?

It is almost impossible to display the entire collection. Remember, I only collected the Batman statues from the line, none of the Joker or Catwoman or Penguin, and I even skipped the Batman Beyond statue, and I still have about 50 statues.

I had a plan to try to make a display cabinet, but, admittedly, once I stopped buying them, I have lost a lot of the motivation.

At the moment, I have eight of the statues actually displayed on a shelf. Maybe I'll just rotate, or perhaps I'll go through, pick my favorites, and start selling these things off. (Probably not... I really do still like the concept of the line.)

So I was thinking about power battery props. Right now I have the original Hal and Alan batteries, and the Sinestro battery they made the first time around. When I first got the Sinestro battery, I was kinda irritated that it was a little bigger than the green. Like they were out if scale a tiny bit. Flash forward to now, with the new line. I would love to get blue and red, and possibly orange and white, but those are low priority. Then I realized they too would be out of scale most likely. And blue and red are different enough that even in the same scale, they are different looking. So I'm kinds digging the idea of a line of lanterns all different. Like, a collection of different shapes and sizes just as it would be in the comic. Anybody else think it might be cooler to have 7 slightly different lanterns rather than 7 exact replicas in different colors? Except red, of course.

Cooler? It would almost have to be, right? Not to knock the idea of just having identical lanterns, but the only time I ever considered buying lanterns was when they produced the Kyle Rayner and the Alan Scott replica batteries. The variety of design is what I'd be looking for.

The color variety is a good start, and the slightly different sizes could be cool. Heck, you could even use one of those 50% replicas and call it Ch'p's or B'dg's.

Just reading up on some comics news on Newsarama, and came across this *exciting* NEW character being introduced to the Batman comics - Wrath! He is the Anti-Batman, a guy just like Batman, all the skills and tech, but using them for evil!

Ooh, what a new and original idea!

OwlmanCatmanPrometheusWrath

Wait... that last one... sounds familiar...

Oh, that's right, Newsarama... Wrath is not a new character. He is new to the New 52, but referring to him as "the latest in what's apparently a new generation of rogues that will be creating havoc on the streets of Gotham City" certainly implies he is a new creation. He is an updated character that wasn't very interesting in the first place.